


but now i'm gold

by middlecyclone



Series: silver lining [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 11:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4433561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlecyclone/pseuds/middlecyclone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I want my best chance,” Jack tells him. “I want to be happy."</p>
            </blockquote>





	but now i'm gold

**Author's Note:**

> There's a lot of fics out there where Jack stays in the closet in the NHL and it ruins his life, and I wanted to write something where Jack takes a chance and lets himself be happy, for once, because we all deserve the chance to live our best lives.

“Hey,” Jack says, knocking on the open door of Bitty’s room. “Can we talk?”

Bitty looks up from his suitcase, where he’s packing up all his clothes for the summer. “Of course, Jack,” he says. “Come on in.”

Jack walks over to the end of Bitty’s bed and carefully shifts aside a stack of folded v-neck t-shirts before sitting down. “I’m moving out tomorrow,” he says.

“I know,” Bitty replies, and tosses a carefully balled-up pair of socks into the suitcase with perhaps more force than strictly necessary.

Jack tries again. “I’m moving out tomorrow,” he repeats, “and I wanted to come and talk to you first, because I don’t want us to miss our chance.”

“Our chance at what?” Bitty asks.

“You know what,” Jack says, blue eyes wide.

Bitty swallows, and stops folding clothes.

Jack stares down at where he’s twisting his hands nervously in his lap. “Look, I have a lot to say,” he admits, “and I’ve been spending days—weeks, really—thinking of the most perfect and eloquent ways to say them. But the truth is, I’m not good at feelings and I’m really not good at talking about feelings, so I’m just going to try and say what I need to, and all I can ask is for you to listen.”

“I’m listening, Jack,” Bitty tells him, and rolls his eyes fondly. “As if I don’t always have time for you,” he teases lightly, and then transfers a stack of jeans into the suitcase and sits down next to Jack in the spot vacated by them. “What is it?”

Jack takes a deep breath, and goes straight into it. “Look,” Jack says, “for the longest time I thought that hockey was the only thing I wanted, and the only thing I needed. I thought that if I got to have hockey, there was no way I could ever have anything else. I thought that if I got to have hockey, I woudn’t need anything or anyone else. And I thought it was going to be fine, and I thought I could handle it, and I was wrong.”

“Oh, Jack—“ Bitty says, placing a soft hand on Jack’s elbow, “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, Bitts,” he says, “but that’s why I have to say this. Because for so long, hockey was the only thing in my life, and then it wasn’t enough anymore, and then I came to Samwell. And these four years felt like … a dream, almost. Because I had hockey, still, but I also had friends and a team that cared about me, and the freedom to be who myself without cameras watching my every move and waiting for me to slip up.

“So if these four years were a dream,” he continues, “then graduating and playing for the Falconers is like waking up by having a bucket of ice water dumped over my head. I’ve just been sitting and staring at the wall and thinking about what it’s going to be like in Providence, without the team or my friends or—or you, Bitty. And I don’t think I’m going to be able to do it.”

“Jack,” Bitty says weakly, “Jack, you can do it, I know you can. I believe in you.”

“Thanks,” he says honestly, “that means a lot, it really does. But I know myself, and I know that I can’t do it. If I try to move on and go back to living hockey 24/7 and shutting everyone else out, I’m not going to make it. I’m not going to be okay.

“But that’s alright,” Jack says hurriedly, watching Bitty’s eyes widen in dismay, “Because here’s the other thing I’ve realized. I don’t have to do it all alone. And I don’t want to.”

“Jack?”

“I want my best chance,” Jack tells him. “I want to be happy. I’m tired of lying and making myself miserable in order to fulfill other people’s expectations of who Jack Zimmerman is supposed to be. I’m tired of being a shell of myself so that other people can keep living under the illusion that I’m some sort of invincible hockey robot with a drug problem. That’s not me, and I’m not going to pretend anymore. Samwell was a selfish choice I made for my own well-being, and I’ve never been this happy in my life, and I want to keep being selfish.

“I love you, and I want to be with you,” Jack says, eyes ever-so-serious, “and I don’t want to lie about it.”

“ _Jack_ ,” Bitty says, eyes enormous, “I’m so _proud_ of you,” and he leans over and throws his arms around Jack’s neck in a huge bear hug. Jack stiffens up in shock for half a second, and then melts into the hug, wrapping an arm around Bitty’s shoulders and burying his face in Bitty’s hair.

“You’re going to come out? Really?” Bitty asks, voice muffled in the soft cotton of Jack’s worn Samwell hockey t-shirt.

“Not officially, not yet,” Jack admits, “I’m not ready yet. But I will be, soon. And until then, I’m not going to hide who I am.”

“Like Kristen Stewart,” Bitty says, and Jack looks at him questioningly.

“The girl from _Twilight_?”

Bitty nods. “Look, she—well, she’s probably gay or bi or something, but she doesn’t talk about it. She has a girlfriend, or at the very least she has a friend who’s a girl who she’s photographed with on romantic outings and days at the beach with. But she’s not, like, officially out or anything, she just doesn’t comment on the speculation at all. I’m not saying the tabloids respect her, because they don’t, and I don’t really know anything about her. It’s just that she’s still kind of a lesbian icon, even though she tries to keep her personal life as personal as possible. And in a perfect world, this wouldn’t matter at all and she wouldn’t have to deal with the tabloids saying rude things about her while captioning paparazzi photos with the phrase ‘gal pals’, but in the world we live in she seems … happy, at least from the outside.”

“You think I could be like her?” Jack asks. “Be an icon to gay kids who want to play hockey without having the media all up in my business 24/7?”

“Well, you can try,” Bitty says. “I’m not saying it’s easy, or even remotely possible. But KStew does it, and let’s be honest, you’re never going to be half as famous as she is. You were never in _Twilight_.”

“Well,” Jack says, “there we go then. That’s what I’m going to do. Be the Kristen Stewart of hockey.”

“Jack, that’s—that’s just really brave,” Bitty tells him, and pulls back to look up at Jack sincerely.

“It’s really not,” Jack says, blushing a tiny bit.

“No,” Bitty counters, “it is.”

“It’s only because of you,” Jack confesses. “If I hadn’t met you, I would never have been brave enough to even consider this. But you make me brave. I look at the way you live your whole life caring for others and always standing up for what you think is right, and I just want to be like you.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Bitty says, and he’s smiling, but he’s also crying a little. “You absolute perfect idiot.”

Jack smiles back, and reaches over to wipe a tear off Bitty’s cheekbone. “So,” he asks, nervously and hopefully, “will you try with me?”

“Try what?” Bitty asks, confused.

“Will you be my boyfriend?” Jack asks. “For real?”

“Oh my God,” Bitty says, “Yes, Jack, yes.”

Jack absolutely grins at that, eyes crinkling at the edges, his whole face seeming to light up from within. “Can—can I kiss you?” he asks quietly, voice cracking with nervousness halfway through.

“ _Yes_ ,” Bitty says forcefully, and tilts his face up to press his lips against Jack’s in a warm kiss, chaste but forceful and full of emotion.

He pulls back after a few seconds. “Oh my God,” he says, voice horrified.

Jack stares at him, face a mask of terror. “What?” he croaks, sounding like his heart has stopped.

“I love you,” Bitty blurts, “You love me and I love you back and I forgot to tell you, I’m a terrible person, what is wrong with me, because Jack, I love you so much it’s ridiculous—“

“Oh,” Jack says in relief, “Oh, Eric, that’s—I don’t care—I mean, I do care, I care more than anything in the whole world, but I’m not—I’m just going to kiss you again, is that okay—“

“Yeah, babe,” Bitty says, relishing in the nickname, “that’s okay.”

Jack kisses him, hesitant at first and then less so, one hand still on his face and the other coming up to cradle the back of his head. Bitty kisses back, hands braced across the spread of Jack’s chest, until they’re both smiling too hard to keep kissing.

“I think I knocked some of your socks on the floor,” Jack says sheepishly.

“That’s okay,” Bitty says, face bright pink, “they, uh, haven’t been sorted yet anyway.”

“I love you,” Jack says again, and grins. “I like being able to say that out loud,” he confesses. “I’ve been sitting on that for a really long time, and it’s nice to be able to honest at last.”

“We’re going to make this work,” Bitty says decidedly.

“Yeah,” Jack agrees, “we are.” He squeezes Bitty’s hand tightly, and that’s how Shitty finds them when he stumbles up the stairs carrying the ingredients for tub juice in Holster’s plastic laundry basket.

“Holy shit,” he screeches at full volume, “come look, everyone, Jack and Bitty got their shit together!” There’s the loud clatter of roughly ten hockey players all pounding up a set of creaky wooden stairs, and Shitty drops the laundry basket in order to barrel into Bitty’s room and wrap them both in a bear hug, knocking all of Bitty’s remaining socks onto the floor.

Jack just laughs and drops his forehead onto Bitty’s shoulder. “If we can handle the team,” he says, “we can handle anything,” and he’s right.

**Author's Note:**

> This is possibly the sappiest thing anyone has ever written while listening to Silver Linings by Rilo Kiley.


End file.
